I just resigned from the Cinnabar School board after more than 12 years as a trustee. No, not from frustration - though there was plenty of that courtesy of the narrow-minded, self-serving, boneheads in Sacramento. The reason was that Colleen and I moved to Cotati and, as a result, I no longer reside in the district - a requirement for trusteeship. I grew up in Los Angeles during the salad days of California, when the Golden State lead the country in education, productivity and imagination. Today, thanks to decades of ever-increasing state-employee entitlements, a ferocious anti-business mindset, and pie-in-the-faith in liberal fantasies, California still leads the country...in population exodus, business relocations, and crushing debt. People get so exercised about the encroachment of Hispanic influence on our culture, when the real threat to California is that it's turning into Greece.

Of course, the ultimate goal of our friends at PETA is to make raising animals for food so difficult that we'll all become vegetarians (organic, of course). Or, failing that, confine us to scavenging the bodies animals who died naturally. And were that to happen, more groups would arise to protect the "rights" of buzzards. They would advocate a "carrion" tax, and the creation of protected buzzard sanctuaries. In the end, PETA is just one more group of people who are so arrogant and self-important that they feel they have a God-given - check that, they don't believe in God - right to tell others how to live.

This was too good to pass up. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee intoned a new freedom during the debate about ObamaCare. In response to the concern that - like all welfare programs - the new entitlements championed by the Democrats will lead to an increase in the jobless rate along with a vast increase in governement dependency, Van Hollen expressed his concern about, "the freedom to choose not to get a job."

I don't believe that the fundamental problem with immigration is that folks are sneaking across our porous borders simply to milk our lavish welfare. It's our lavish welfare in the first place. Long before we paid people not to work, or mothers to have kids out of wedlock, the wretched refuse teemed at our borders to escape poverty or penury back home. Back then it wasn't the nanny state that attracted those with "get up and go" to get up and come, it was the opportunity to make a new life. And I believe that's as true today. Of course, as the nanny state gradually squelches our entrepreneurial spirit in order to make the electorate beholden to Nanny, and in the process kills opportunities, new arrivals may have little choice but to sign up for the dole.

Salmonella is another good reason to buy local food. At least if you get sick you can go throw up on their doorstep. Seriously, I believe that the closer one is to the source of the food, the healthier the food is likely to be. Or at least, the least adulterated, mishandled or misrepresented. I only wish that farmer's markets were more frequent, and that local farmers were better compensated for their investment in sweat and cash. You can thank our nanny-state progressives for the restrictive laws and regulations that have made local small (e.g., non-agribusiness) farming increasingly a rich man's hobby.

Ah the dreams of our utopian-minded breathren to allow us all the freedom to smoke the herb of our choice while preventing us from smoking tobacco if we choose. One is medicine, the other is poison. Truth is...both are toxic.

The consequences of the PETA-inspired Prop 2 will soon come crashing down on local poultry farmers. Prepare yourselves for a egg to cost as much as a latte. This is what happens when the oh-so-well-intentioned people in government who do no actual work for a living conspire to tell those who actually do work, how to do their jobs.